


Warmth

by theflyinganonymouse



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Angst, M/M, MAMA!AU, allusions to depression, apparantly, but not discussed outright, but with a hopeful ending, or i'd like to think, some swearing because that's what chanyeol does
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-01
Updated: 2017-02-01
Packaged: 2018-09-21 09:55:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9542576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theflyinganonymouse/pseuds/theflyinganonymouse
Summary: Chanyeol helps melt the ice Minseok finds himself trapped in.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is fairly short and not as fleshed out as I had wanted it to be initially but I hope you like it anyway! This is not beta read so I apologise for any mistakes.

Minseok is as cold as a corpse.

It’s easier to pretend that’s the reason why no one likes to touch him, that they’re all just uncomfortable with how someone who is so obviously alive can feel like he belongs in a morgue. It’s easier to pretend than to face the truth. It’s easier to smile and make jokes about wearing long sleeves in the middle of summer because he’s never warm enough thanks to his powers.  

It’s a lie that the others all see straight through. They’ve seen how he starts to sweat and feel uncomfortable when the spring months arrive and gently edge towards summer and how he spends the hottest days hiding away in his room with the aircon blaring, only leaving the house if he is forced to and, even then, never for long. On a summer’s day ten minutes in the direct sunlight can leave him a sweating, shaking mess.

The others at the house play along when it suits them and make cruel remarks when there are any slip-ups.

He’s dangerous, they tell him, and he needs to keep his distance- he can’t hurt anyone else.

And he knows that they’re just words said in the heat of the moment but he can’t help but take them to heart. He knows he’s dangerous and that he can cause serious damage without even trying. He knows that because he had nearly killed someone when his powers had first manifested and he’s had to live with the guilt ever since.

There’s another slip-up and this time Minseok hurts Sehun, their shy and awkward maknae, and he can’t help but hate himself for it. Sehun doesn’t deserve to be hurt and definitely not by someone who he had trusted and looked up to. The guilt he feels whenever he sees Sehun makes his skin crawl and bile rise in his throat and he tries to keep his distance.

Minseok starts to isolates himself for fear of hurting anyone else.

His room becomes his fortress. He keeps the temperature so low that the others can see their breath, hoping that they’ll stay away rather than suffer through the freezing aircon and the fat snowflakes he has constantly falling. They don’t like how everything in Minseok’s room is covered with ice and snow – the desk, the floor, the bed – and so Minseok always make sure it’s below freezing whenever one of them stops by. But with the cold, with the snow and the frost, he doesn’t have to worry about hurting anyone because the others will always wrap up to keep warm. He doesn’t have to be scared about hurting them. He doesn’t have to hate himself.

He spends long days locked inside his room. Most of the time he will lay on the bed and do nothing. Not think, not dream, not sleep. Other times he tries to keep his mind and his hands busy. He spends hours making tiny, intricate sculptures from the ice that flows from his fingertips. He makes castles with turrets and towers and princes and princesses dancing in front of ornate carriages. He makes animals that look ready to leap from the shelves where they are kept, dogs with wagging tails and lolling tongues and cats with their gleaming eyes and sharp claws.

“They’re so beautiful.” Yixing comments whenever he visits and he spends more time looking at his creations than at Minseok himself. “So delicate and _real_.”

“Take your favourite.” Minseok always replies with the same small smile tugging at his lips.

“But if I take one then it’ll melt.” Yixing will say and he will look sad. Minseok always feels terrible for putting that look on Yixing’s face. “And then I’ve destroyed something beautiful just to fulfil my own desires.”

“You’re human, Yixing.” Minseok reminds him, his voice bitter, and he will feel the terrible frustration and hate boil in his stomach and it will make him feel sick. “That’s what we do.”  

Minseok knows it’s true because he has destroyed so many beautiful things.

It’s usually after Yixing’s visits that it all becomes too much, when the anger and pain bubbles over and the voices scream how terrible he is and he just can’t pretend anymore. He will give into the terrible parts of himself and shatter everything he’s created and scream and cry and bury himself under mountains of snow.

Jongdae, not intending to be cruel, tells Minseok that he makes the whole house feel cold whenever he suffers through these storms and that just makes Minseok hate himself even more. It makes the storms worse because he knows he’s making everyone else suffer, too.

When they’re over – when the tears have frozen to his face and he is lost under a couple of feet of snow – he is exhausted. He can go days, even a week, afterwards without doing anything but breathe.

The others will dig him out from under the thick blankets of white and shovel the snow out through his bedroom window. Joonmyun will run gloved hands through his brittle hair and Baekhyun will remind him not to listen to the voices, that they only want to hurt him.

Minseok knows he deserves to hurt for all that the pain he has caused others.

The voices in his head are all lives that he has stolen. They belong to memories and feelings that are not his own, that are too secret and intimate to ever be shown to the outside world, and Minseok lives them every time he closes his eyes to sleep. He wants to rip them from his brain and forget they ever existed. He wants to forget seeing what he never should have seen.

He can’t.

The storms grow worse, more frequent and prolonged.

Then they get a new addition to the house.

His name is Chanyeol and he laughs so loudly and freely that Minseok can hear him even when he’s trapped inside his snowy prison. His voice is warm and makes something strange flutter in Minseok’s chest, something he doesn’t recognise.

Chanyeol has been with them for only a couple of days when the aircon breaks. It’s the middle of summer and the heat outside has infiltrated the house and made everyone irritable and sweaty. The heat is too much for Minseok, too suffocating and exhausting for him to keep the temperature in his room down and he can’t concentrate long enough to keep the ice and snow from melting.

He becomes delirious.

He staggers from his room dressed only in his boxers. His mind is focused on their freezer and how much of himself he’ll be able to squeeze into it to try to get his temperature down. He doesn’t see the other person in his path until stumbles and a large hand reaches out to steady him.

Minseok screams.

The pain is overwhelming. It engulfs him and it burns him from the inside out, swallowing him whole within the inferno of fire that rages in its wake, and he can feel his skin where the hand is touching him blister and bubble. There are thoughts and feelings and the memories that are not his – _not his!_ – that barrel into him and they smother him.

He loses himself.

He sees wide smiles and shining eyes. He feels soft lips and gentle touches, the welling of joy in his chest and the comfort of knowing he is loved unconditionally and without any kind of reservation. He is engulfed in the memories of a family that love him with all their hearts and drowned in emotions that he distantly – _strangely_ – thinks are too foreign to be his own.

He is comforted by his mother and smothers sobs with laughter because she is far too short to brush the hair from his sweaty forehead and kiss him on the cheek but she tries anyway.

‘I love you.’ She says and Minseok doesn’t think he remembers her voice sounding so soft and sweet. ‘Whatever happens and wherever you’ll go, remember that. There will always be a home waiting for you here, my beautiful boy.’

Minseok feels flames lick at his fingertips.

He burns.

The world goes black.

He doesn’t know how long he sleeps. His dreams are haunted by an unshakeable cold and unfamiliar faces that he knows too well to not recognise. There’s a cacophony of voices in his head that are screaming over and over, ‘you’ve done it again! How much of him have you stolen? Thief! Thief!’

He calls for Yura in those brief moments he’s awake because his sister has always helped him out before and he needs her help again now. He calls for his mother and his father, too, desperate because the cold is starting to settle in and douse the fire in his body.

They don’t come.

But it’s okay – it’s okay – that they don’t because slowly, slowly Minseok starts to put names to the faces he sees hovering around his bed whenever he’s awake. They smile at him and mop at the sweat on his face and make him drink from the cups they hold to his lips. He knows them and he knows himself.

Minseok can still feel the fire running through his veins and he’s terrified because it must have been days and he can still call upon Chanyeol’s gift if he tries. There’s a version of Chanyeol in his mind laughing at the fire that burns at his hands and climbs up his forearms.

“You need to calm down.” Yixing tells him. “You’re going to hurt yourself.”

Minseok ignores him, sitting up in bed, “have I killed him? Have I killed Chanyeol?”

There’s a battle of fire and ice raging within him and he’s never felt anything like it- doesn’t know how to stop it.

“He’s fine, Minseok.” Yixing says but Minseok doesn’t really hear him. “He’s okay, he’s just sleeping.”

“I’ve killed him.” He mutters and Yixing draws back as flames burst from every inch of his skin. “Oh, god. I’ve killed him!”

The voices in his head are screaming at him.

‘Murderer!’ Daesuk’s voice shouts.

Sehun’s is full of hurt, ‘how could you do that, hyung?’

‘Can’t you go one day without hurting someone?’ Baekhyun’s snaps.

“Minseok!” Yixing sounds desperate. “You need to stop!”

Chanyeol’s voice is the loudest- it booms and echoes and Minseok’s skull vibrates with its volume – and he is forced to listen even if he doesn’t want to.

‘You’ve set fire to the bed- they’re going to have to get Joonmyun in to douse you again if you don’t control it.’ The voice says and Minseok clasps at his head because it hurts. ‘Take some deep breaths and pull it back. You don’t want to burn the house down, do you?’

“Nooo.” He groans. “No, I need to-.”

“Minseok!”

‘Put it out!’ Chanyeol’s voice thunders.

The flames flicker out and Minseok can suddenly see his breath as the temperature drops below zero. Snow begins to fall and his tears turn to ice as they leak from his eyes.

He tries to stop, he tries to reign his powers in but he can’t! He gasps and sobs and he can feel his blood freezing in his veins. The voices are screaming and screaming and it’s too much.

It’s too much!

“Help.” He whispers and Yixing’s gloved hands catch him as he begins to list to the side. “I can’t-.”

He passes out.

There is no trace of Chanyeol’s powers when he next wakes, even if his voice is still shouting the loudest, and Minseok is grateful. His control is back and he draws the cold into himself so that the others in the room don’t have to suffer.

“Are you feeling better?” Joonmyun asks once Minseok has dragged his eyes open.

Jongin’s young face is pulled into a frown, “you scared us, hyung. What happened?”

“I don’t… Chanyeol? Is he okay?” Minseok’s voice is hoarse and his throat painful.

“I’m fine.” The voice comes from by the door and not in his head and Minseok sits up so quickly the world spins.

Chanyeol – the _real_ Chanyeol and not the one in his head gloating about how good his arms look now he’s started working out – is leaning against the doorframe. There’s a frown on his face that Minseok thinks looks out of place.

“Easy.” Joonmyun tries to ease him back against his pillows. “You’ve been out of it for the last couple of days.”

“You totally wrecked three beds.” Jongin tells him. “And Baekhyun got a pretty bad burn- nothing Yixing couldn’t fix but he bitched about it for hours.”

“I…” Minseok cradles his head in his hands. “I don’t understand. What happened?”

“That’s something I want to know, too.” Chanyeol says and his frown grows more pronounced. “Why did he… My powers- why could he use them? I thought you guys said his power was ice?”

“You didn’t tell him?” Minseok asks and he feels sick. “Why? I could have killed him.”

“You didn’t hurt him.” Joonmyun promises. “He was fine.”

“What?”

“Is someone going to tell me what’s going on?” Chanyeol asks and he sounds frustrated.

“You shouldn’t touch me.” Minseok tells him without any kind of hesitation. “I’m dangerous. Part of my powers- if you touch my skin, I steal your memories, your thoughts, your feelings… Your powers. I can kill you, I can suck the life right out of you.”

Joonmyun tries to hide his shudder and Minseok’s guilt grows heavier and heavier as he speaks, “it’s horrible. Imagine a cold so intense it _hurts_. It spreads through your veins and it weighs you down and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. You can feel yourself dying and it feels just like falling asleep.”

Minseok bites down on his bottom lip to stop himself from sobbing. Still, the breath hitches in his throat and the Joonmyun in his head whispers his disappointment. It was so long ago, when they had first met, that it had happened and their contact had only been brief. Minseok hadn’t heard Joonmyun’s voice in months.

“I didn’t feel any of that.” Chanyeol says. “Minseok- you looked like you were going to pass out so I tried to help but, as soon as I touched you, you started to scream. I panicked and I let go and you just kind of looked straight through me, like I wasn’t really there or something. Then you were covered in fire and I had to stop you from burning the whole house down. I tried to help but then you fainted.”

“I don’t remember that.”

“I’m not surprised.” Joonmyun murmurs and if Minseok looked he’d be able to see the worry on his face. “You’ve been really sick.”

“Yixing thinks it’s because your powers are opposites.” Jongin tells him before adding with a shy smile at the newest member of their group, “and Chanyeol’s powers are really strong. They were just too much for your body to cope with.”

Minseok spends the next few days in bed, not having the strength or the will to move. The others, apart from Chanyeol, visit him often and try to get him to eat but Minseok can barely spare them any of his attention with Chanyeol’s voice prattling on in his brain about anything and everything and picking fights with the other voices. It’s exhausting trying to keep up with it all so Minseok misses the concern in the eyes of the others.

He retreats back to his own room once he’s allowed to and he doesn’t have the energy to make it snow like he once had. He doesn’t want to make it snow anymore, not now he knows what it feels like to be warm. He borrows oversized hoodies and hoards blankets and makes himself a little nest that not even the promise of cuddles and hot chocolate can persuade him to leave.

Then Chanyeol comes to visit.

He sits on the edge of Minseok’s bed and looks unsure and out of place. Minseok doesn’t want to talk to him, not when his voice is going on and on _and on_ in his mind, so he pulls at what little energy he has and makes it snow, hoping to drive him away, but Chanyeol doesn’t budge.

Instead the snow melts away with a hiss about a foot away from his body and he fixes Minseok with a bemused smile.

“I came here to talk.” Chanyeol tells him.

Minseok means to say ‘I don’t want to talk’ but instead his mouth says, “your family love you.”

“I know.” Chanyeol’s expression brightens. “That’s why I’m here, in this house. They knew I would be happier living with people like me so they encouraged me to come find you guys. They didn’t want me to be alone.”

“The others are nice.” Minseok says, earnestly. “They’ll be good to you.”

“They want to be good to you, too.” Chanyeol replies and he sounds just as earnest as Minseok. “You just need to let them.”

“I’m dangerous.”

“No, your powers are dangerous.” Chanyeol’s temper is much like his powers, hot and quick to ignite. “Minseok the person isn’t dangerous.”

Minseok responds in turn and scoffs, “you don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve _hurt_ people.”

“And the rest of us haven’t? Find one of us who hasn’t hurt someone we care about. Our powers are dangerous things and accidents happen but that doesn’t mean _we_ are dangerous. We don’t want to hurt anyone.” Chanyeol’s words are heated but Minseok doesn’t think he’s angry. Not really. “We’re not monsters.”

“You don’t know what I’ve done.” Minseok tells him.

“Why would it matter?”

“I’m dangerous.” Minseok repeats, stubbornly, and adds, “I could have killed you.”

“But you didn’t.” Chanyeol points out. “You need to stop punishing yourself for what happened. You didn’t hurt me.”

“I could have.”

“You didn’t.”

Minseok lets out a long, tired sigh, “why are you here?”

“I want us to be friends.” Chanyeol replies honestly and without any kind of hesitation.

Minseok can feel the heat radiating off Chanyeol’s body, even through the layers of blankets he’s hiding under, and he desperately wants to lean into it and chase the chill away from his bones.

He doesn’t.

He doesn’t say or do anything.

Chanyeol visits him the next day and the day after and the day after that, too, determined and eager, and he talks enough to fill the silence between them. He tells Minseok about the day his powers manifested and how he’d set fire to his curtains and his mother had been so mad. He tells stories about his sister and all the friends he’d left behind as if Minseok hasn’t lived them and he talks about how much he likes to play the guitar and his dreams of becoming a singer. He asks Minseok questions about the others and then, as days and then weeks pass and they grow more comfortable with one another, questions about him: what he likes to do, his favourite music and what he likes to eat.

After some initial discomfort, Minseok finds he doesn’t mind.  

Chanyeol’s questions are innocent enough and the answers don’t take too much effort to answer.

Minseok doesn’t notice when he starts to look forward to Chanyeol’s daily visits or when he begins to move his blankets closer to Chanyeol so he can enjoy his warmth but Chanyeol comments on it one day as they catch their breath following his re-telling of one of Joonmyun’s terrible jokes.

“You know,” he says, an easy smile tugging at his lips, “that’s the first time I’ve ever heard you laugh. You should do it more- happiness suits you.”

And that night Minseok finds he can’t sleep, Chanyeol’s words repeating over and over again in his head.

‘Am I happy?’ He thinks.

‘You don’t deserve to be.’ Daesuk’s voice hisses. ‘Not after what you’ve done.’

‘Ignore him.’ Chanyeol’s voice tells him and Minseok listens. ‘Everyone deserves to be happy.’

He joins the others for breakfast the next morning instead of waiting for Joonmyun, Jongdae or Yixing to deliver it to his room. He tries to ignore the way the others stare, shocked, because it’s the first time he’s been out of his room and further than the bathroom since he’d gotten sick with Chanyeol’s powers a couple of months ago.

“Are you feeling okay, hyung?” Sehun asks.

Minseok forces himself to smile and, without thinking, he scoots his chair closer to Chanyeol’s and basks in the heat rolling off him, “yeah, I’m- I’m feeling good.”

Chanyeol beams.

A couple of days later finds Minseok curled up on the sofa with his head in Chanyeol’s lap and the younger’s gloved fingers running through his hair. The others are all out doing more exciting things and the voices, for once, are quiet.

Minseok, for the first time in years, feels content.

“Did I tell you,” Chanyeol starts, his voice soft, “that when I was sixteen I burnt Yura so badly she had to stay in the hospital for a couple of days?”

Minseok freezes and searches through the memories he has of Chanyeol’s family and he can’t find anything but happiness.

All he has of Chanyeol is happiness.

“We were fighting over something stupid, like kids do, and I lost control.” Chanyeol tells him. “She had to have a skin graft but you can still see where I hurt her. It’s- I can… I can still hear her screaming. I have nightmares about it sometimes still and, shit, it was horrible. I felt so bad, I avoided her for weeks. I was so certain she’d hate me for what I had done.”

“And did she?” Minseok asks.

“She was really fucking angry.” Chanyeol snorts. “But she was angrier that I was blaming myself for what had happened. She told me it was an accident and I didn’t believe her. I mean, who accidentally hurts someone they love as badly as I’d hurt her?”

Minseok doesn’t say anything.

“But she kept telling me over and over again that it was an accident, that I was the only person we knew who was like me and there was no way I could control all the power that had been given to me without some hiccups along the away. Not that I’d call giving your sister third degree burns a hiccup but, you know.” Chanyeol shrugs and Minseok sees he’s smiling again now. “And when she’d said it enough times and I had bruises from where she’d hit me whenever I tried to blame myself, I guess it just finally started to sink in. I still feel guilty about it but I don’t blame myself for it. It’s taken me a long time to come to peace with what happened.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Minseok asks even if he’s already guessed the real reason.

“Because I think something bad happened and you didn’t have a Yura to tell you it wasn’t your fault.” Chanyeol says simply.

Minseok feels his heart start to race and there’s the familiar sickening feeling of guilt building in his chest.

“You don’t have to tell me.” Chanyeol reassures him.

Minseok does anyway.

“There was this boy at school,” Minseok’s voice shakes as he talks, “and we were good friends, I guess. We’d hang out together on the weekends and go out for food after school. It was nice and I liked him a lot. He must have liked me, too, because we were at his house one day and he kissed me right on the lips.”

“Oh, Minseok…” Chanyeol murmurs.

“I kissed him back and I was so caught up- if I hadn’t realised something was wrong then I could have killed him.” Minseok blinks back tears.

‘Maybe you should have.’ Daesuk’s voice snarls. ‘Instead of leaving me a vegetable for the rest of my life.’

“He’s in a coma and he… The doctors said he’s never going to wake up.” Minseok nearly whispers. He sits up and scoots down the sofa, putting distance between him and Chanyeol and immediately feels the cold sink into his skin. “He was so smart and kind and he had the whole of his life to look forward to and I robbed him of that.”

“How old were you?” Chanyeol asks.

“Fourteen.” Minseok answers.

“And you had control of your powers then?”

“I don’t have control of them now.” Minseok tells him, bitterly, before adding, “but that was- I didn’t know I had powers until _that_ happened.”

“Then why are you blaming yourself?”

The question makes Minseok’s heart stop beating, “what do you mean?”

“If you didn’t even know you had powers then there was no way you could have known that was going to happen.” Chanyeol keeps his words gentle. “You were kids with crushes and you just did what kids do. You couldn’t have known your powers were going to manifest and that they were going to be so shit.”

Minseok’s laugh sounds more like a sob.

“Seriously, your powers are the worst. I don’t think I’d have made it out of my teens if I had been stuck with them.” Chanyeol says. “But you made it through and you’re here. Do you know how amazing that is? How amazing you are?”

“How is that amazing?” Minseok asks. “I can’t even touch someone without hurting them.”

“Accidents happen, Minseok. Shit, I cremated Sehun’s toast this morning and I’m meant to be in control of my powers. But that bit of your powers you can’t stop it – there’s no off button – not like with the ice thing or me with my fire. You can’t stop idiots like me from touching you or someone catching you off guard and brushing against your bare skin. You can’t control that.”

“But-.”

“No, there are no ‘buts.’ What happened with that boy was an accident and you need to stop blaming yourself for it. There was no way you could have known that that would happen so you need to let it go, okay? It wasn’t your fault.”

‘You killed me!’ Daesuk’s voice screams but it is quieter than it was before.

“It wasn’t your fault.” Chanyeol repeats and Minseok breaks down.

Chanyeol pulls him onto his lap and cuddles him against his chest and Minseok lets himself cry fat, ugly tears. Chanyeol doesn’t say anything, just holds him close and the heat of his body chases away the cold. Something shifts in his chest. It’s a warm feeling he doesn’t recognise after spending so many years with his emotions trapped in ice.   

 ‘You love him.’ Chanyeol’s voice says, sounding gleeful. ‘Or is it me you love? I guess it doesn’t really matter because you’re-.’

Minseok ignores it.

Chanyeol notices when his tears stop, “are you all done?”

“I’m sorry.” Minseok says. “I got snot on your t-shirt.”

“Gross.” Chanyeol pulls a face but he doesn’t sound mad. “It’s a good thing I like you.”

The mood shifts with the sincerity and depth of feeling in Chanyeol’s words.

Minseok moves so that he’s straddling Chanyeol and their faces are only inches away. Chanyeol’s gaze burns and a thrill of _something_ runs up Minseok’s spine.

Chanyeol cups his face with his large hands, “have I said your powers suck?”

“You might have mentioned it.” Minseok murmurs.

Chanyeol chuckles and Minseok likes how warm his breath feels on his skin.

“They are the worst.” He says. “Especially when all I want to do is kiss you senseless.”

“Sorry.” Minseok whispers even as the Chanyeol in his mind shouts, ‘do it anyway!’

“Don’t be.” Chanyeol tells him and Minseok can’t help but return his smile. “We’ll work something out.”

Their lips hover millimetres apart and Minseok feels warm. His heart is thudding in his chest and his cheeks are flushed pink.

Minseok is _alive_.

**Author's Note:**

> So I might have borrowed some of the ideas with Minseok's powers from x-men but I thought they fit quite well? Let me know what you think.


End file.
